At this point in Clockwork Prince, Tessa Gray and Will Herondale are still at the stage of making goo-goo eyes at each other, but Jem Carstairs, the skinnier male of The Infernal Devices love triangle (All right, yeah, self knows. This is a love triangle. So? Paranormal love triangles are THE BEST!), has the temerity to punch Will Herondale in the face (If you had broken Will’s nose, Jem, self would never have forgiven you. Never. Never. EVER), plays wild violin music that is sure to get Tessa Gray’s attention — after she’s already changed into her nightgown and everyone else is in bed; how convenient is that, that Tessa’s room is right across the hall from Jem’s and no one else seems to be awake — and they nearly DO THE DEED? IN HIS BEDROOM? With Will Herondale (presumably) passed out from being punched in the face?

Self kept praying, during the whole of that scene, that something would happen to interrupt. Something like mebbe Will Herondale (Self loves writing his full name, she knows not why) walking in and saying “Uh-oh!”

But Will never puts in an appearance. Oh, where is that poetry and drama-spouting boy when you need him? Instead, it’s off-with-the-nightgown time and —

What?

What?

What?

What is the matter with you, Jem? You and Will are supposed to be parabatai. Able to read each other’s hearts, etc etc. You do not, self repeats NOT:

a) Punch your parabatai in the face, thereby causing him to bleed;

b) Play wild, discordant violin music that lures Tessa Gray to your bedroom in the middle of the night;

c) Sleep with your parabatai‘s love.

Never mind if Will never actually professed his love, and keeps pulling the Heathcliff act on Tessa Gray. Jem should be able to tell that Will is in love with Tessa. Isn’t that the point of being parabatai — that you can read each other’s hearts and minds?

Upon return, Will is very moody, jumps off the train before Jem can follow him, and disappears.

When he still hasn’t returned to the Institute the next day, people start to worry.

While everyone is sitting around the breakfast table, pulling their hair out with worry over Will’s whereabouts, Jessamine, she of the wicked parasol, sits “on the chaise lounge with a watercolor easel and papers propped before her; she had recently made the decision that she had fallen behind in pursuing the maidenly arts, and had begun painting, cutting silhouettes, pressing flowers, and playing on the spinet in the music room, though Will said her singing voice made him think of Church when he was in a particularly complaining mood.”

“As if we’d know what to do with Will if he didn’t have the morbs every day,” said Jessamine.

Jessamine is so wickedly amoral! Which is why self loves her to pieces.

Dear blog readers must know that for the last three days, self has avoided practically all interaction with the outside world and remained in her room at the Banff Centre, coughing and sneezing and reading The Infernal Devices.

But this afternoon, she decided to see the doctor and the doctor told her that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. Well, maybe her throat did appear a little dry. “Get a humidifier,” she said.

Then, self decided to go downtown and she had herself delivered there by taxi. And she went a-hunting for the Filipino grocery store that her cousins took her to last Saturday. And Hallelujah, there it was on Bear Street, right next to a pharmacy.

Then she decided to go to a little shopping mall, which had an Indigo bookstore (Self knows she should stop frequenting chain bookstores, but really, this was the only store that had copies of The Infernal Devices), and inside self engaged the saleswoman in a lively conversation about vampires and what-not, and then she asked to see a copy of The Bane Chronicles and there it was, right near the front, in hard cover.

And then self and the saleswoman, who was about self’s age (which is to say, NOT YOUNG) stared reverently at the cover for a few seconds, without speaking. Finally, the saleswoman almost whispered, “Isn’t that a fantastic cover?” Indeed it was, dear blog readers. Indeed it was.

And then she scanned the Table of Contents, and did see a “Herondale” mentioned, but it was not Will Herondale, it was Edmund.

But she only wants to read about Will Herondale.

When she got back to The Banff Centre, she did a quick check of fan fiction on Will Herondale (BWAH. HA. HAAAA!) and saw there were something like 185 works tagged such.

Then, on a hunch, she decided to look up Magnus Bane and there were almost 1,000.

WTH????

This Magnus Bane seems to be quite a magnetic fellow. Self first encountered him in Clockwork Angel, when he was at the vampire party where Tessa Gray was channeling a vampire named Camille and Will Herondale was pretending to be her subjugate and where Will’s throat was driving all the vampires at the party nearly wild with blood lust and where a very bad vampire named de Quincey actually got to feel Will’s pulse and Will let him because you know, he had to make like he was a subjugate . . .

That scene was one of her favorites in Clockwork Angel (as if she hasn’t told dear blog readers at least 3x already) and in Clockwork Prince, Magnus Bane keeps declaring (at least 3x) that he feels no attraction whatsoever for Will Herondale but lah-di-dah, lah-di-dah, what’s going on in all those fan fiction stories, there must be something there or there wouldn’t be nearly a thousand of them, would there?

Self has enjoyed an Infernal Devices/Hunger Games mash-up in which Katniss Everdeen is a Demon Hunter who lives in present-day Hoboken, NJ She chases demons, of course, and Peeta is one. Katniss has a magic bow that hums when a demon is near. But it inexplicably fails to hum when Peeta is near, which enrages Katniss and makes her determined to catch that demon, Peeta. Let’s hope she succeeds. Because self just hates that these two keep missing each other and, well, there has to be contact at some point. Right? Right?